


blood and water.

by 21stCenturyHero



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, Post 4.5, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25368109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/21stCenturyHero/pseuds/21stCenturyHero
Summary: “Blood defines an organism.Such was the first lesson children learned in the Scholasticate[...].”After the battle of Ghimlyt Dark, they fled north and west towards Dravania -- where the river fell from the Hundred Throes, and the forest was ancient and wise --, and there, Estinien met an old friend.
Relationships: Heustienne de Vimaroix & Estinien Wyrmblood, Warrior of Light & Estinien Wyrmblood
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	blood and water.

**Author's Note:**

> Please, be warned that this fic has several mentions to blood and self harm, as well as a discussion of parental issues. If those topics are somehow sensitive to you, please stay safe and proceed with care.
> 
> In other news, I played Dragoon 80 and I knew I had to write this fic.

_Blood defines an organism._

Such was the first lesson children learned in the Scholasticate, albeit he had internalized it through different means.

Perhaps that’s why he didn’t turn away as he stepped in the battlefield, nor he was met with fear; he embraced the dragon’s blood, and with it, he accepted the power of the Eye: desperate to redefine himself, to not be the person that he had been, the person in that book. 

And still, he battled on -- even if, truth was, all he wanted was to save someone else -- because maybe he could be different, maybe he could be special, maybe he could be _better._

\---

Those forests were ancient, old and wise, and they were the trespassers, still covered in ash and blood.

Although no man nor beast would bring him harm anymore, as Awandah’s Garlean monstrosity made its way through the beaten path, the chocobos at the edge of the trees turned their heads to stare, watching in silence as the two distorted shadows of men carried on in silence, with only the sound of the motorcycle’s ceruleum motor disturbing the air, and it was long before they reached the wooden cabin north of Tailfeather -- following the river up until it descended from the Hundred Throes --, where he finally parked the machine after a week on the road and let it die down, with the two of them being drowned by the noise of the wilderness instead.

Then, Estinien sighed.

“Awandah,” he called, voice tired. “We’re here.”

\-- and like so many times before, the man didn’t reply.

The dragoon’s fists clenched on his lap, and it took all his self-control to tell himself that it was fine.

Everything was _fine._

He could still feel Awandah’s aether, churning, turning, dissipating like mist in the air, and he knew that the man -- that the _boy_ \-- was alright; he was made from sterner stuff than most, and yet he couldn’t help but worry, deep, deep down.

With all the care in the world as to not unwrap the cape from his body, Estinien lifted the Miqo’te man up, carrying him in his arms towards the small shack, and he could feel the heavy weight of the brass key in his pocket even before he unlocked the door to the single room building, pushing it away with a shoulder as he entered; like every time before, coming to the place felt like a homecoming of sorts, and he took a second to appreciate his surroundings: from the flowers on the window to the polished spears standing against the walls, everything was as he remembered -- and if the world was maybe a little less cruel, he could imagine this almost exact same room somewhere far away, in the heart of the Firmament that Aymeric was attempting so hard to rebuild.

Maybe _she_ could go back someday, he indulged in thought.

Then he unceremoniously dumped Awandah’s unconscious body on the couch.

It was a sad sight, to see how far he had turned: blossoming all over his dark brown skin and standing in stark contrast with its color were pearl white scales, different only in hue from the ones that covered Estinien’s own figure, and a single malformed wing sprung up from his back, sticking up at an awkward angle while his already sharp fang and claws were made only deadlier, stained scarlet with his blood as the man struggled in his sleep. The changes creeped in slowly, like a vine covering the cracks on a stone, but now, a week later, he feared that when the man opened his eyes, they would be the same gold as a dragon’s, robbed of their typical azure color.

But it was _fine,_ he tried to convince himself. 

Fury, what a mess.

He knew what had to be done, at least.

Turning his back to Awandah for the first time in a week, he stepped into the cabin’s kitchen, letting muscle memory guide him to what he needed -- to the knife, to the candle, to the match, to the glass --, and holding the blade over the flame, he allowed for the warmth of fire to sterilize it thoroughly; it would hurt in more ways than one, but it was fine -- Awandah could just wiggle his little fingers and be done with it once he woke up, and it was _fine._

Estinien pressed the knife alongside so many other parallel scars, hissing under his breath as the sharp pain reached his brain.

He had a debt to repay.

\---

The hours dragged on.

One week. For one week, Awandah had slept, having exhausted his aether reserves in a foolish last stand against the Garlean forces. And for one week, he had tethered between the edge of man and beast, clinging to life with a flimsy disposition.

\-- nevertheless, Estinien was starting to get really, really tired of the silence. 

If he closed his eyes, he could still see blood -- blood, stretching as far as one could see; the carnage left behind by the Weapon of Light, pointed like an arrow towards the enemy’s heart. It filled him with a queer sense of déjà-vu, of melancholy and nostalgia, and perhaps something that could even be called anger, to think that he was once the same -- just another puppet in Ishgard’s war -- because like it or not, he and Awandah were now connected by blood, like brothers ought to be. They were mirrored, from their eyes, to their aether, to their veins, sharing the same bond as the great wyrms whose will they inherited once had.

And maybe, just maybe, the same sort of misplaced, fraternal concern he bore for Orn Khai and Alphinaud also applied to the Warrior, even if he was fully aware that Awandah would rather die than hearing that.

“You drank too deep of the Eye’s aether,” he admonished with a sigh. “Can you imagine if I wasn’t there to save you?!”

And yet, there was no response, no dry wit nor snappish answer like the ones he had grown used to, only an uncomfortable groan coming from the Miqo’te’s tiny body as he dreamt, and the man shook his head, sitting by his side. It was nostalgic, indeed; to think how many times he watched over his younger brother as he slept, tucking a lock of hair behind an ear, way before the war arrived at Ferndale and winter came to bury it deep beneath the ground.

“Have I failed you like our fathers failed us?” he asked _,_ and albeit it was no louder than a whisper, it was enough to make the woman at the door freeze in her tracks. Estinien turned his head to stare her, and maybe the smallest of smiles threatened to curl his thin lips: like the room, she stood exactly how he remembered -- carrying herself with a grace that he did not possessed but which was fitting of a dragoon, with eyes too old for someone so young, eyes that just like Awandah’s, mirrored Estinien’s own, always lost just beyond the horizon in quiet contemplation.

Eyes that, like theirs, saw too much blood.

Nevertheless, her face softened when she saw him, and from the depths of her throat, she let out a laugh.

“Hello, person who doesn’t live here,” she greeted him with a gloved hand, and by the porch, she abandoned her bloodied spear and armor. “Would it kill to tell me when you’re showing up at least once?”

“‘Tis good to see you too, Heustienne.”

Such was a conversation that they repeated many, many times throughout his journeys, when the road had nothing else to offer him save homesickness for a home he no longer had. So he came back here, to Heustienne’s tiny abode, where she too missed a place she no longer belonged to, and together, they drunk in honor to those they had lost until the early hours of the dawn, when the forest woke up and the blood they shed seemed all too insignificant amidst the waters of time.

If there was a next time, he hoped Awandah could join them.

With a tiny smile, she put herself to work, washing away the gore from her hunt off her stained hands, and despite everything that had happened, things remained the same.

“If you failed us…” she echoed his words, lost in thought. Heustienne fed wood to the embers in the hearth in front of the sofa, and pulling a chair, joined the two men around it, letting her gaze drift towards Estinien’s somber profile as she studied him. “Never have I thought that you were the type of man to harbor such feelings.”

“There isn’t fifty summers between the two of you,” he pointed out, vaguely gesturing between the Elezen woman and the Miqo’te man. “You were both too young to be a life lost in the war.”

Never mind the fact he was younger than both of them are now when _he_ was given a spear and told to fight, and he fought, and fought, and the war didn’t end, not until he let his blood and hatred define him, to _change_ him, and all it took was a naive boy who refused to hurt another person to bring the song to a close, shattering the cycle of children taking weapons against the enemies of their long dead fathers.

“But we are alive now,” Heustienne said with a smile, shaking her head and raising her voice, staring towards the hearth and no doubt thinking of fire, raining down from the heavens and-- “And even if this ground is dirty and bloodied, at least today I can call myself free, even after everything.”

Estinien opened his mouth, but no words came out.

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” she replied with a nod.

\---

From the day they were born, it was bloodshed forever.

Such was the fate of the children of Ishgard, and soon, of all the sons of Eorzea -- and such was the bond that united Estinien, Heustienne and Awandah.

He put Awandah’s sword and cane against the wall and grimaced with little joy; it was hard to not wonder how his life used to be before all this mess began, before he accepted the Eye -- they never talked about it, not even when Alphinaud was asleep and all that was left beneath the stars were them and Lady Iceheart -- but those were memories of years ago, better left buried beneath the snow.

Maybe one day they could travel together again, he entertained in thought. Once the war was over and Alphinaud was older they could once again pack their bags and head towards the unknown, towards Abalathia’s Spine and the Sea of Clouds, disappearing into lands no man had ever stepped on -- and oh, the sights he could show them!, for the world was large and the dominion of mankind was small even in its infinitute. The boy’s twin could join them, and so could Orn Khai, and maybe they would finally be able to leave their sins behind, walking towards a new dawn.

But it was never that easy.

He still had a grave to tend, after all.

He placed Awandah’s body on Heustienne’s bed and stared at his face for a long moment, as if attempting to commit it to memory; he beheld his round complexion, his scars and his freckles and how they were littered through his features like a thousand thousand tiny stars, and it was odd, even unnerving, seeing him so utterly _bare_ \-- there was no mask of false politeness, no paint applied over his face, and even his glasses were broken and lost long ago, even before Estinien stepped foot in the Ghimlyt Dark, and even if he stood ugly and distorted as the blood in his veins changed him, he couldn’t help but feel like he was trespassing in a way.

“I still cannot understand why you brought him here,” Heustienne confessed, joining Estinien at the bedside and looking down at the Warrior’s sleeping frame, lips pressed together into a thin line. “What are you planning, Estinien?”

“I…”

A long, uncomfortable silence dragged between the two of them like a shadow, creeping over them and sinking in the gaps between words, inky, cold, _dense._ The man clenched his fists, and it was hard to remind himself how to _breath_ with that weight on his chest.

“Eorzea knows only one savior, only one Warrior of Light,” he whispered at last, his bangs hiding his face like a curtain. “They cannot fathom he’s a monster like the two of us.”

_They cannot fathom he’s a monster like **me**._

\-- Heustienne was a candidate to inherit the Eye, once; so young, so brazen, so _bright._

Would she follow his footsteps if she was the one named Azure Dragoon when the same hatred burned inside her chest, white and hot like dragonfire, he wondered?

If so, he was glad he saved at least one person, even if he failed her in other ways.

Her gaze wandered down, towards his trembling hands, and she caught sight of the badges around his wrist, suddenly connecting the dots in her head. “Oh, Estinien,” she censured with her voice soft, reaching for his arm and giving it a small tug. “What did you do?”

So young. So brazen. So _bright._

“I did only what I needed to,” he said, wrangling his hand away from hers and massaging his hurt wrist as he turned his back to the woman, trying to stave off the memories that came like a flood -- _he was barely thirteen, so small, so helpless, so **hurt** \-- _“Don’t worry about it.”

He didn’t, however, miss how the corners of her mouth did a sharp downturn, and he knew those eyes: so wide, so sad, so full of pity.

Those were the same eyes as Alberic’s.

\-- and to think someone that younger than him would ever look at him like that.

\---

They both had wounds to lick in life.

Standing bloodied and red handed, existing as living reminders of a war that was long over, they were the sons and daughters of fathers who knew no other way to raise their young, and as the perpetrators of a long forgotten sin, they forged on -- as the children lost amidst the snow, found only to be shaped by the flames of conflict into holy weapons by those who took them, broke them, groomed them and armed them with the corpses and carcasses of their enemies.

And now, they remained.

Sitting in the dark, at the water’s edge, they watched the river run south -- not with their eyes, albeit the faint starlight was all they needed to guide themselves through the night now -- but with something from _within,_ observing as the aether changed, shifted, churned, flowing like the blood of a giant creature with the Hundred Throes as its heart. They beheld the miracle of being alive, and they were only expectators, not knowing if one day they would wither and die or if their life would keep on forever like the waters, finding its way to an ocean of memory and dissipating into simply _being,_ without a beginning or an end.

It was terrifying, in a way, but the uncertainty also brought them peace -- the two scared and scarred children of men, whose path was set for them in stone and blood.

But that song had come to a close, too.

“You’ll be a good father someday,” Heustienne commented, soft and absent-mindedly as she opened the wine bottle she chose for them that night -- an old, ancient thing that Estinien somehow recognized as a gift from him to her, brought all the way from Othard in the back of a pirate ship -- and in silence, she passed the man the glass, letting him examine it as she turned her gaze towards the skies, towards the Dragonstar up above, and lost herself in the pitch black ocean that stood so nitid for them now.

He couldn’t help but scoff.

“I have no plan to _sire children,_ and you know of my… dispositions,” he said, taking a swing of the beverage, and for the first time, he missed Ishgard: he remembered when he was young, listening to the songs in the old Orchestrion playing to a room full of people.

“But don’t you see?” the woman at his side asked, poorly muffling a laugh, and the wine tasted soft and fruity on his tongue, with hints of citrus and peach. Heustienne lied back and stretched her arms, trying to touch infinity as she addressed him. “You already _have._ Awandah, Orn Khai, the young Leveilleur… you raised and cherished them, and when you are gone, they shall carry your legacy on. Isn’t that what being a father is all about?”

He choked on his drink.

“You…!”

\-- and yet, he could not prove her wrong.

He could not remember his father’s face, not anymore, not after twenty years -- but Alberic he could see clearly; how he smiled, the sound of his voice, the warmth of his calloused hands against Estinien’s tiny back. It was easy for him to imagine being small and defenseless again, barely thirteen summers old, walking barefoot in the stone floor of the old dragoon’s house as the smell of cocoa guided him to the kitchen, where the man would be waiting for him to finish his lessons with a warm beverage and fresh pastries, excited to chat away the afternoon with his newfound protégé -- and oh, if only he had the strength to tell him how much he was grateful way back then, before he became bitter and before he became cold.

He wondered if Alphinaud and Awandah ever felt the same way towards him -- seeing him as a friend, a mentor, or even a brother -- and it was ironic, in a way, how him pointing his spear against the man he came to call _father_ became Awandah himself baring his steel against Estinien in one last battle at the Steps of Faith.

Were they the same, even in that?

Heustienne laughed, holding her belly and rolling around the grass as Estinien tried to cobble together a response, but was unable to. Both him and her were there because they inherited the will and determination of others; Heustienne in the form of the spear Peregrine, passed down to her by her own adoptive father, and Estinien as the Azure Dragoon, but it didn’t stop there -- not really; he also owed the blood in his veins to another, and from Nidhogg and his own father before him, he inherited his strength and his duty to his star, a duty he shared with Awandah.

 _Brothers._ In everything, but blood.

“Estinien?”

They locked eyes, deep gray meeting an uncanny mixture of gold and azure somewhere in the middle, and he knew they were both different people now.

The fires of hatred and revenge no longer burned hot in their chests, and for the first time in forever, there was no shadow looming over their eyes; the Warrior stood proud at the edge of the light, and something about his gaze _burned_ with sheer determination as he walked towards their shadow, carrying himself with grace even when he had to lean against his cane to take a step. The years passed by and the boy in front of him matured, enduring pain, and hurt, and heartbreak, but he was all the stronger for it, standing tall against the coming storm, even at the cost of himself.

\-- and when Estinien finally smiled, the man called Koh’a Awandah didn’t look away for the first time.

“Good morning, my friend,” he said, offering a place at his side so at least that night, they could relive the old times -- when they were young, mad and foolish, braving those same forests that were so ancient, old and wise, untainted by blood and ash. “See that you don’t make a habit of dozing off in battle, huh?”

Shyly, Koh’a smiled back.

\---

They departed at dawn, after everything was said and done.

“Visit me more often,” Heustienne said to Estinien, holding him in a tight hug before letting him go, and as she stared deep into his eyes, in that moment he could feel her loneliness and concern. “You know I miss the company.”

“I know,” he replied with a nod and faint smile, and it was sad to know that they were never friends back in their days as dragoons -- could things have been different, had he offered his hand to her back then? Or were they bound to be the people that they were, the people in that book, chasing vengeance for a feud born long before them, with their blood tainted and corrupted?

Maybe if he only reached out, she would have been saved.

But in the end, it didn’t matter, not really.

From the top of his shoulder, she stared at the boy behind him -- at Awandah, who stood on the edge of the trees, tinkering with his motorcycle -- and Heustienne’s expression changed, from her tired relief to something more worried, and once again, she pulled Estinien close, whispering in his ear.

“Estinien, Master Awandah…”

“The boy sees too well, even without his glasses.” Estinien said while shrugging, mangling himself free from her with slightly annoyance. “It’s possible he already knows.”

Her gaze fell to the ground, defeated. “It’s like… he’s being _pulled apart…”_

A sigh. “I know. But I won’t let anything bad happen to him,” he promised her, punching her shoulder gently before turning his back and walking towards Awandah with a wave of hand. “Fare thee well, my friend! I shall be expecting a finely aged Ishgardian wine next time, and nothing less!”

Behind him, he could hear her cursing his name under his breath.

“I can’t believe you let my ceruleum run low,” the boy complained as the Elezen man’s shadow fell upon him, pushing away his bangs with the back of his hand and letting a trail of oil in his forehead, and that was enough to tug at the former dragoon’s heartstrings, somehow -- that in the end he was just a young man, no more than twenty four summers old, getting dirty and dizzy on alcohol.

And that was enough, he thought as the Miqo’te man wagged an accusatory finger in front of his face.

“If Fenrir dies, I’m forcing you to push her all the way to Ishgard,” he said.

“A ‘thank you’ for saving your life would be nice, you know,” Estinien teased, crossing his arms and watching as the Miqo’te stretched his limbs with a soft _hmph,_ grabbing his keys from the necklace around his neck and swirling them around in his finger.

“Whatever. Are you ready to go?”

A nod. “Whenever you are.”

“Estinien Bale!” Heustienne screamed behind him as the machine roared to life, being guided by the boy towards the ocean of trees, and the chocobos at the edge of the forest turned their heads to stare at the Garlean monstrosity that disturbed their wilderness with the noise of its ceruleum motor. “Your father misses you!”

And in that moment, Estinien laughed, loudly, clearly, freely, for he knew that one day his blood would rot and his flesh would decay, but the river remained, following south towards the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> The themes of the dragoon questline are honestly so good and fascinating... Children inheriting their fathers' hatred only to be distorted by vengeance, becoming the one thing they hate the most, but also the theme of deep familial love and caring for each other... I'm glad I got to explore them.
> 
> I've been itching to write Heustienne and Estinien's relationship ever since I met her, and DRG 80 was the nail in the coffin. I hope I did them justice, and I hope you all enjoyed this fic -- and tell me, what is another class quest with themes you deeply enjoy?
> 
> Like always, you can find me on twitter here: https://twitter.com/21stcenturyher0


End file.
